Social trend #4: Social is the new production line
Happy Tuesday!
Today we continue our series on the top 5 Trends in Social Business today. As a reminder, our trends so far have been:
1) Information sharing is the new black. Therefore trust and expertise location are essential elements of all businesses.
2) Knowing how to reach a client set of 1 is as important as segmentation and demographics. Social makes this possible. There are “averages.” But the rapid emergence of Big Data, social networks, mobility, location-based tracking is generating a thousand clues about the individual human being. This will bring about the death of the “average” and usher in the era of “you” – the unique consumer, citizen, patient, student.
3) Innovation is a cultural norm for high performers. Decisions will be based not on “gut instinct,” but on predictive analytics and social analytics.
4) Social networks are the new production line.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtLdZX7IupQ&feature=youtu.be]
In 1959, the legendary management guru Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker,” defined as someone who does “non-routine” work… seeks and makes sense of information (he estimated 38% of the worker’s time)… and renders judgment – creating what we now call intellectual capital.
Now consider what that means today. What’s happened to information since 1959? Well, there’s that exponential increase in volume, speed and variety of data that I mentioned. Now think about what tools are available. In 1959 – files, spreadsheets, tabulators. Today, we have advanced analytics… heading toward systems, like IBM’s Watson, that aren’t programmed… they learn.
We also have billions of mobile devices, which are rapidly becoming the world’s primary interface to the Internet. In one study in China, 90 percent of users said they have their mobile device within arm’s reach 100 percent of the time.
Finally, and most importantly, knowledge workers today have 24-hour access to something else: each other.
In a world where value is shifting rapidly from things to knowledge, knowledge workers are the new means of production. And it follows that the social network is the new production line.
This is important. In a social enterprise, your value is established not by how much knowledge you amass, but by how much knowledge you impart to others. We are in early days of this shift. But some pioneers are changing how they actually create value.
Consider the Mexican cement maker CEMEX. The company wanted to create its first-ever global brand of concrete. It would have to accommodate multiple different specifications for concrete in different countries. To develop this, they didn’t build a new lab or production process… they built a social network. It was called Shift, and it connected their product development staff in 50 countries. It grew to more than 400 active communities. They wound up launching the new global brand in a third of the time it used to take them to launch a new product within Mexico.
Now, this new way of operating is spreading across the enterprise. CEMEX is working with IBM Research to deepen the expertise functionality in Shift – to dynamically build heatmaps of recommended experts, materials and activities, so that any CEMEX employee knows how to become an “expert” in a given topic of interest. The first group to make use of the tool was the Alternative Fuels community. The long-term objective is an enterprise expertise model where information is analyzed automatically, content is organized in relevant topics and personalized action plans are created – and where rewards are shaped by who contributes the most and best ideas.
Remember, this is a cement company.
Note: This may have begun as an attempt to enhance connectivity and sharing. But it is taking a crucial next step to the actual creation of expertise… and the actual creation of experts.
Cemex is an example of the social dimension of the Smarter Enterprise. Could every organization follow its example? Could every company hire, compensate, evaluate and promote on the basis of how well one shares and catalyzes knowledge? I believe most can, and will. And we are working aggressively to do this at IBM.
For example, today, every IBMer has a social network page – as well as access to thousands of internal information sources, blogs, communities, wikis and universal instant messaging.
We are now working toward a future – a near-future – in which all IBMers will be rated by their peers and profession, based on how good they are at sharing their knowledge… how good they are at making it useful, consumable… how well they contribute to the community and to our clients’ needs and experience. Five stars? Here’s your bonus. Two stars? You have work to do.
Talking Social Business with Airlines in Prague with a new Social Study for Airlines
The GLOBAL AIrline Summit.
On September 9, I’ll be talking with senior airline executives from around the world at the IBM Airline Summit in Prague, Czech Republic. The theme of the summit is “Smarter travelers expect smarter airlines: Delivering an exceptional customer experience while optimizing operations.”
Today’s travelers really do expect more from airlines than ever before. Yes, we expect smooth operations, a pleasant flight and good value.
But more and more we expect personalized customer service while we are shopping for a trip and during each step of the journey, delivered consistently through all the devices we use.
The NEW Socially Connected Airlines.
Today, meeting those expectations depends on using the latest social business tools to help the airline workforce keep the planes on schedule and to create exceptional customer experiences.
I recently read a related article in Business Travel News that might interest you by Paul Campion, an IBM colleague in the UK.
The SUMMIT. A Breakthrough Event!
At the summit, airline executives will share their own experiences and hear speakers from other airlines, industry analysts, a leading international airport, Coca-Cola marketing, Netflix, and from IBM.
We’ll be launching some exciting new social business research sponsored by IBM with PhoCusWright - “Social media in travel: mayhem, myths, mobile and money.” The study will provide clear quantitative insights around what travel companies need to manage, mobilize, and monetize their social strategy.
Of course, the Summit won’t be all work and no play. I hear that we’ll take a tram ride and walking tour through Prague’s beautiful old town. Then we’ll share a meal in one of the city’s great restaurants. I’m looking forward to it. Watch this space for my blog post after the event.
TGIF - Generation C: Connected and in control
The level of connectedness today is unprecedented
And, with that connectedness comes power.
This is Generation C: Connected and in control!!!
Here is how today’s customer behaves.
We know this – we all behave like this. We interact with many different channels and devices in order to make decisions and interact with the companies that we do business with.
And when we interact through all of these different channels, we expect that the business is thinking about experience – not just in a single channel at a point in time but holistically as we interact across the channels to complete whatever it is we are trying to do. We EXPECT that a site will be relevant if we get to the site from a banner ad or search term. We EXPECT that the profile we set up online is the same profile for the mobile application. And, we get a little annoyed when we have to repeat all of our information to the customer service representative after already entering it all through the phone keypad.
However, the reality is that, most companies are extremely siloed. They often have different technology and data that is driving the customer experience. But, even worse, they often have entirely different objectives and are measured in inconsistent, or even competitive, ways.
In four years between 2008 and 2012, the percentage of brands that were rated as having “excellent” customer experience plummeted from 11 to 3 percent.
Being able to use social and omni channel is the solution! More on this next week!!!
Lessons from Vacation: Stop whatever you are doing to watch the sunset!
Here is the sunset I saw on my vacation. Stop what you are doing!
The same is true in Social! If your company is using social without a social governance policy -- stop whatever you are doing and create one!
The Social Business guidelines for your company should be based on your values. Consider following best practices from my book Get Bold.
1. Guidelines should be written by your employees in a social group setting. Those guidelines developed in a participatory fashion will last.
2. Guidelines should state why the guidelines exist; for example, to innovate in a responsible way.
3. Guidelines should be short and to the point.
4. Guidelines should state your position on open dialogue what’s fair game and what’s not (confidential information).
5. Guidelines should state consequences.
6. Guidelines should encourage transparency.
7. Guidelines should state privacy and rights of your company’s partners and clients.
8. Guidelines should guide in adding value and learning from mistakes.
9. Guidelines should discuss time spent in social media.
10. Guidelines should encourage your company’s goals in social techniques.
On http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php you can find a collection of company social guidelines. Read through them and define your guidelines in sync with your culture and goals. For example, in sync with its corporate culture, Zappos’s Social Media Policy is “be real and use your best judgment.” This Social Policy showcases Zappos’s trust in their employees! Intel’s Social Media Guidelines have a few best practices as well. Examples include “be transparent” and “if it gives you pause, pause.” I also love their advice that “perception is reality and it’s a conversation.” I think the key is defining these with a collaborative group of digital citizens throughout your company.
For large global organizations, corporate culture sometimes needs to make way for local culture. For example, at IBM we have a very open-minded culture supported by our senior leadership team. We have sponsorship from the very top of IBM supporting our movement into end-user-generated content to become a Social Business. However, we do understand that there are also cultural differences across the globe. As such, we make sure to understand these cultural differences and embrace them. With IBM operating in more than 170 countries, our team reviews privacy acts around the globe to ensure that we keep the interest of the employees at the center of focus.
Now, find a sunset and ensure your company has a policy!
Social Trend #3: Innovation is accelerated in Culture through ideation & predictive
Happy Monday! Social Business Trends are shaking the world and today's Social Coffee Break is about our third trend.
Innovation must be part of a corporation's culture. Things are moving so fast those who can change and adapt will be most competitive. In today's Social world, innovation is accelerated through social. See how ideation (crowdsourcing) and predictive capability (analytics) accelerate innovation in corporations!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJnafM6HnlA&feature=youtu.be]
Skills gaps are creating huge challenges in Social, Mobile,
The IBM Tech Trends report is based on a survey of more than 1,200 professionals who make technology decisions for their organizations (22 percent IT managers, 53 percent IT practitioners, and 25 percent business professionals). Our respondents come from 16 different industries and 13 countries, spanning both major and growth markets.
I was surprised that mobile is the largest gap, followed by Cloud. While there is a gap in Social, of the Big 4, it is the best one.
Thoughts? Any surprises to you?!
You are never too old to boogie board -- or to social network!
In my summer vacation series, here's my next lesson from the beach!
I got to use my boogie board to surf the waves and the wave pool! What I learned is that you are never too old to boogie!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roQxFb0B9Pw]
Just like you are never too old or too high in a company to use social networking. The fastest growing group on Facebook are those over the age of 55! Did you know that 32% of top CEOs have at least one account on a social network! The % of CIOs who say that social is important to their business has more than doubled in the last year per the MIT Sloan Management Review.
What are you waiting for? Catch the wave and boogie!
Talking social zombies and bootcamps at SXSW 2014
Wondering what are key trends you need to know when building your social plan? Come find out in these fun/interactive sessions proposed for SXSW 2014!
First, you need to remember that social is a global phenomenon. You can engage with folks in Nairobi, New York or Naples. But... we all have cultural differences, and if you fail to take these into account you run the risk of becoming a social zombie:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AETBzICyHtE]
Vote now for this session! [http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/23204]
Second, unleash the vast power of social by tying it to those other big trends in technology right now: big data and analytics. Apply social across all your business processes, create an environment of expertise and trust, and develop a corporate culture that embraces collaboration:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aduweZCX1A4]
Vote now for this bootcamp! http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/23035
Will I see you at SXSW 2014? If so, reach out and let's chat further!
Sweet tea and screen doors. Social Businesses could learn alot from them!
Yes, I am southern pure as they come! I love my sweet ice tea, grits with butter, screen doors, and Kudzu.
In the summer, the screen door is an essential element of everyone's home. The screen door's entire point is that it's not a barrier. Its job is to open easily. It is a welcome to all visitor's and friends that approach it.
Is your social media site like that screen door? Does it open and welcome others in?
Tips to make your site as welcoming as that Southern Door!
- Do you make people type in that "code" to enter? Don't!
- Is your site mobile friendly and usable?
- Do you have stellar content ? Content is Queen!
- Is Video part of your strategy? Video is the highest trusted media! Use it wisely!
- Do you have a Twitter Widget on your Home page to engage your audience? (Check out my blog on IBM Voices!)
- Can you feature other guests on your site?
- How do you listen? All relationships listen first!
- Are your employees empowered to really represent the brand on your site?
- Have you chosen the right social tools that welcome your audience? For instance, if you are selling to men, Pinerest may not be the best first choice.
- Do you constantly review the feedback and make changes to adapt and change?
Top 6 Social Business Patterns for ROI!
It's easy to see how the world has adopted social media to help strengthen ties between people all over the world. People like to share and the explosive growth of Facebook and all the other social media platforms out there are surely a testament to the fact that we like to share and discover what our friends are up to. (IBM is, of course, the market leader at applying social techniques to business situations. Our entire Social Business Platform is the best in the market, four years in succession, according to IDC. )
Why these 6 Patterns Matter to Your Company:
While you might see how social could apply in a business setting, and understand that somehow harnessing some of these principles might be beneficial to improving how your organization works, you might not know where to start, or how the common business processes you work with could be transformed with social business. Or you may be looking for the top ROI yields. Or how to embed social without the S word (yes, that's Social that some people view Social as Play!)
It's for these reasons that we have created the Social Business Patterns or Use Cases.
- Identify top ROI cases
- Showcase the value and business outcome with having to use the S word
- Allow you to learn from others
These are a suite of example business processes common to many industries. We show how these processes can be improved using IBM's Platform for Social Business and, most importantly, what return on investment you can expect to realize from implementing the use cases. These are not IT solutions, however. They are examples of business processes which will be very similar to your own. Using and adapting these examples can allow you to improve the communication, collaboration, awareness, knowledge-sharing, morale and efficiency of your organisation in simple but very effective ways.
Over the coming blog posts I will look at each of these in more depth, but let me outline to you the areas IBM's Use Cases fall into:
Finding Expertise
Being able to locate the expertise in your organization is vital in many situations. Almost any service organization relies entirely on the knowledge of its subject matter experts. Manufacturing organizations such as car manufacturers, oil & gas producers and many others need to know how to solve problems quickly and easily without re-inventing the wheel and by accessing the expertise of the right people. Travel and transportation organizations' entire business is built on being safe and reliable. These two facets are based on them being experts in their chosen fields and making the most of their staff's expertise. Finding Expertise focuses on how any organization can make the most of their experts. Whether it's finding the right person in critical situations or unlocking the tacit knowledge in the experts' heads to build the collective expertise of the organization.
Knowledge Sharing & Innovation
Social Business solutions are at the forefront of helping organizations all over the world increase their level of innovation. Social helps to drive the process of innovation by giving ideas and new concepts places to grow and adapt based on the collective knowledge of the participants. Use of social demonstrates how you can create a more nimble and flexible organization with dramatic return on investment opportunities backed by real client examples.
External Customer Insights
Many organizations nowadays have a presence on social media. They now have Facebook and other popular social network accounts, some use these to great effect and are generating real new business. You can boost your selling power by unifying your sales people and distribution chain together with the most important people to your organization - your customers.
There are a set of sub cases around the external focus:
- Customer Service. Since empowered customers with social tools are changing the focus of business from selling to “partnering” , engaged employees lead to…higher service, quality, and productivity, which leads to… higher customer satisfaction, which leads to… increased sales & profit.
- Sales. Using social to better target individuals, not just demographics and segments to better sell to your client.
- Community Building. Using community to target your advocates and drive loyalty into your base or to recruit and learn from a new client set is a powerful ROI case.
Recruiting and On-boarding
Your organization lives and dies by the quality of its people. Attracting and retaining the best people in the market is one sure way to make sure that you are investing for your future. To be able to demonstrates how you can enormously increase the time-to-value of new employees, increase the retention rate of your employees and provide much faster access to experts, highlights the focus on people as an important part of your strategy.
Everyone involved in bringing new people on board, including the new recruit themselves, wants their endeavour to be a success. How do you go about ensuring that happens? More than simply "inducting" a new member of staff, how do you streamline the recruitment, assessment and hiring processes?
Mergers and Acquisitions
Did you know that between fifty and eight three percent of mergers and acquisitions fail? This is an enormous cost for everyone involved, both financially and in terms of morale of the staff and customer and stakeholder confidence. A focus on social in acquisitions can help reduce this failure rate by improving the key business processes involved in mergers and acquisitions. It focuses on the people and the culture associated with the organizations coming together and demonstrates how employee retention, failure rate of acquisition and communication can all be improved.
Safety
Social can assist in helping your organization improve its safety record and have a huge impact on ROI for worker's compensation and injuries. . The social tools within our solution can help you reduce incidents, increase effectiveness for your existing safety programs and accelerate the adoption of a culture of safety amongst everyone concerned. Many industries use simple, but effective and tested approaches to using social collaboration can improve the safety record of your organisation and its reputation.
Join Me
We're going to explore each of these Use Cases in more depth in the coming blog posts here, so I hope you'll join me as we deep-dive into how social business, and IBM's Platform for Social Business in particular can help your organization.
As always, I'd really appreciate your feedback and comments! To get more information, you can get the summary report here!
https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/signup.do?source=swg-US_Lotus_WebMerch&S_PKG=ov14017